Untitled
by Rjalker
Summary: Willow had a strange dream, all those years ago, the night that her friend died. Though, now that she thought of it, it didn't really seem so strange after all...


**Untitled.**

**Created on 10/1/13, 9:43 AM**

"We won't be able to hold this position much longer!" Willow shouted as she dashed forward out of the protective circle her friends had formed around the fallen Slayer so that she could kill the 'frog' as they'd started calling them before it could get close enough to use its long-range attack on the group. If you got in close enough, it would be forced to use its melee attack, which was nothing more than swiping at you with its claws. The attacks were fast, but limited to only four patterns. Once you knew which one it was going to do, dodging became effortless.

But if you were far enough away for it to use its range attack, _that_ was when the game of 'smash the frog' became deadly. If the poison it spit landed on you, you became paralyzed for ten seconds even as it burnt itself into your skin with a searing pain that was enough to draw a cry from even the toughest warrior. They'd been forced to learn that lesson the hard way.

Behind her, she knew the others were closing ranks to fill the hole she'd momentarily formed in their protective shield around their wounded friend.

Swiping at the frog as it began to fall into its attack pattern four with the shining white blade she'd had with her since entering the so-called 'game', Willow dodged to the left, and then jumped into the air to dodge its claws, and brought the blade down in a slash that blazed a trail of blue light and sliced cleanly through the frog's skull. Or, at least, whatever passed for a skull in this world.

They hadn't been trapped there long enough yet that she wasn't still expecting to see blood and guts burst out when the frog fell to each side, cut clean in half down the middle, and the red spiraling petal-like shapes that drifted peacefully into the air for a moment before what was left of the body shattered into shards of luminescent glass caught her by surprise once more.

But then she was leaping backward—with a grace she could never have accomplished in the real world no matter how hard she tried—and Xander and Tara had stepped out of the way just in time for her to land back in between them.

Dawn, from the other side of the circle, gave a small shriek, and Willow had to resist the urge to spin around and help her. The urge was quickly wiped away when five chargers lived up to their name, charging toward the group with clubs raised and shark-teeth bared as they screeched loud enough that Willow thought her ears would bleed.

Readying her sword even as Xander and Tara did on either side of her, she knew that Giles and Anya would defend the youngest Summers girl with their lives. Her sword bit deep into the shoulder of the first charger, sending crimson shapes exploding into the air. Before it could react, she yanked her sword out again and plunged it deep into the creature's heart. Twisting the blade and watching the thing's health go down on the floating bar above its head until it was reduced to nothing, this time the shattering of almost-glass was met with a grim smile.

The other chargers were dealt with in seconds, and with that, the 20th wave was over.

Sheathing her sword at her side with an exhausted sigh—she wouldn't ever make the mistake of letting it out of her hands again—she let herself fall to her knees, drawing in deep, gasping breaths.

How did Buffy make fighting like this look so easy? She'd seen her take on more than fifty vampires in a row, and she never seemed to break a sweat!

"Everyone still alive?" Xander's shaky call drew her attention to the rest of the gang, and she pushed herself back into a sitting position so she could check for herself that they were all okay. Giles' glasses were askew, and he had a cut on his forehead that was slowly leaking red to float up into the air, Xander and Anya both looked like they were ready to drop at any moment—but Anya had that feral look about her that made a chill crawl down Willow's spine as she remembered that the woman who looked like she was twenty was actually a thousand year old demon who had thrilled to tear men limb from limb.

Dawn seemed only a little worse for wear, as far as Willow could tell, much to her surprise. Not even a scratch on her, though…that didn't really count for much, since they healed on their own after a few minutes. But, really, though, out of all of them, Willow had expected that Dawn would be the one they'd be protecting, not…

Not…

Her gaze was drawn to the ground at the very center of the circle they'd formed.

The Slayer lay there, unconscious and unmoving, the ground beneath her stained with red that was nothing like the polygons that floated from their wounds. This wasn't hitpoints, this was _blood_.

Spike's coat that had been draped across her body in an effort to fight off the chill that seemed to have crept over the Slayer now sported a darker stain that grew every second that passed.

Her wounds weren't healing. They had no way to help her. All they could do was try their best to protect her from further harm.

And it was all Willow's fault.

If she hadn't stepped on that pressure plate—

_The snap-hiss and whir as something silver shot out of the ground not even a foot from where she'd just stepped, the painful and frightening feeling of hands encircling around her stomach before she realized that it wasn't a monster coming to kill her, it was just her friend, just Buffy, and then she was spun, yanked to the side and thrown back the way she'd come, the hands releasing her just in time for a splash of crimson and a gasp of pain to register with her consciousness._

_ Landing on her side, the whooshing sound continued, and she only had just enough time to realize why it sounded so familiar, because it sounded like the blades of a fan—before a horrified scream rang out and echoed in the still room._

_ And she looked up just in time to see her friend, Buffy, stagger backwards from the spinning blades that had appeared out of the ground where she'd stepped, her movements strange, like she were asleep, being dragged around on strings instead of held up by her own power, one hand spasming at her side, the fingers jumping and straightening out of control as though she'd been electrocuted._

_ And then she watched as the blades disappeared back into the ground, retracting into the pole they'd sprung from, and glimpsed, for one single instant, the deep dark red that stained them now._

"Wil's right," Xander said, shocking her out of the memory and back into the present, "We won't be able to stay here much longer." She saw his eyes drop to their wounded friend, before they snapped back up to Giles, "Is there any way we can…?" His voice trailed off, desperate and afraid.

The old Watcher bit his lip and shook his head, pulling his glasses off as he did so and wiping them on his shirt, "I'm afraid any attempts to move her would only make her condition worse," He said softly, looking for all the world to Willow like a man returned from war who'd seen too much death to not know when it was inevitable, "This…situation is…is bad, as you'd say." He chuckled weakly, but there was no humor in his voice.

Movement from Dawn drew Willow's gaze to her where she was leaning against Tara's side, her eyes glued to her sister's unmoving form, "How bad is bad?" She asked softly, reaching a hesitant hand out to touch her sister, but snatching it back at the last moment, as though afraid she'd make it worse.

She'd seen the Slayer get hit with the spinning blades. She'd seen the blood and the pain on her sister's face. There was no making her forget that. But they hadn't let her see the actual damage that had been caused. Willow had pulled her back before she could get close enough to see the horror of what had happened, and they'd kept Spike's coat over the Slayer's wound to act as both a bandage and a censor.

"Oh, uh, you know," Willow said nervously, inwardly flinching away from the image that sprang to her mind, and not really able to control the words that came out of her mouth, "Just…bad…in-in the general sense of…badness…"

"Yeah," Tara quickly agreed, looking down at Dawn with a comforting smile, "B-but don't worry, I'm sure she'll be fine, right?"

"Yes, uh, just try not to look, alright?" Giles put in, rubbing at his head and blinking rapidly, causing Willow to momentarily worry that he was going to pass out, but he straightened a moment later, looking normal again.

"Yeah," Anya said, "Because you know, her insides just almost fell out of her, which is something a young and impressionable girl like yourself shouldn't be exposed to—and Xander's giving me that look that says I should shut up because I'm traumatizing you, so I'm going to, but know that I'm not happy about it, since your sister is dying and I think you deserve to know it since this is probably the last chance you'll ever get to see her." The ex-demon crossed her arms over her chest and looked away, a narrow-eyed pout on her face.

Everyone stared at her in silence with various expression of shock on their faces.

Anya, sensing their stares, turned back, "What?" She asked, looking annoyed, "I'm only telling her the truth, and you guys are always going on about how it's not okay to lie, so maybe _you_ should shut up and stop telling _me_ what to do, since I, unlike _you_ three, actually follow my own rules, and I'm _fairly certain_ that our time is almost up, so..." She got to her feet, and lifted the quarterstaff she used as a weapon off of the ground, and taking up a defensive position facing away from them as she did so, "I'd get ready if I were you."

"Ah, yes," Xander said sarcastically, but nevertheless standing and drawing the scimitar he used from his belt, "Because the sky is made of diamonds and we all forgot to wear our shiny foil hats."

Willow wasn't even going to attempt to figure out what that was supposed to mean.

Because she didn't have time to join in on the sarcastic comments as she threw one, sympathetic look in the direction of the younger Summers girl. She could feel the seconds ticking away, could feel the ground beneath her feet start to tremble with the weight of the hundreds of feet that were pounding against it.

She heard Dawn, and Tara, and Giles each get to their feet behind her and draw their own weapons as they all once more closed ranks around the girl that had sacrificed herself for them, and prepared themselves to enter the fray once again.

Because the 21st wave was about to begin.

And they had to be ready.

**Finished on 1/10/13, 6:55PM**


End file.
